After using Home Assistant for a few years, and since then being guilty of constantly looking for new features to integrate into my setup, I noticed the complexity of finding the correct products. Whether you are looking for new light bulbs or looking for your new smart thermostats, the huge amount possibilities quickly makes it overwhelming. Having to choose between smart lighting products like Ikea tradfri, Philips Hue and other similar products can be a big task. A journey a lot of other Home Assistant lovers already been through. All the articles have focus on the product it self and maybe the integration with the most popular third party integrations like Google Assistant, Alexa and so on, but not Home Assistant it self.
My idea is to make a platform which all Home Assistant users can contribute their research and experience among different products in different categories like: Thermostats, Smart bulbs, Security cameras and so on. This would help new users get to better overview of all the features as well as pros and cons for the all products on the market.
I’m imagining a website which all users have the right to suggestion changes like a repository. The website would have different categories eg. Smart Lighting, Smart Thermostats, Security Cameras.
Then within the each category there is a list of all the smart devices within that category. Each smart device/Technology have specified what features it has, so they can be filtered by their specification. Just like when looking for a new computer on a webshop you can filter by brand, ram capacity and operation system.
Users can then give their experience they have had with their devices and rate them, which would help other people decide whether or not to buy the product.
Another benefit such system could have, is the possibility to track the popularity of each product among the Home Assistant community. This also means our voices could be heard by the manufactures, who make all these awesome gadgets for us!
This is a huge thought that of cause would require a lot of work in order to work. However so fare this community have proven to be great at working together and helping each other, so I personally something like this actually could be done.
Whats your thoughts about this idea? 